Now that my Age of Autism colleague J.B. Handley has demonstrated the role of Wyeth in funding Every Child By Two (HERE) -- the vaccine initiative that Rosalynn Carter, Paul Offit and Amanda Peet boosted a week ago -- I think it's time to share a piece of paper someone slipped me a while back. It looks innocuous enough -- an inter-office memorandum from 1979 (Click HERE for the pdf)* about distribution of Wyeth's DPT vaccine. But read closely -- a series of SIDS deaths in Tennessee is prompting Wyeth officials to make sure that vials from a single lot don't get distributed to a single state, county or health department.

The memo says "senior management staff" gave the OK to proceed with the plan.

I am going to refrain from interpreting this document -- although, if there is an interpretation besides the obvious one that Wyeth didn't want correlations being drawn between DPT vaccine lot numbers and SIDS deaths, I can't think of it right now. And sure, it can be argued this is ancient history -- the vaccine has been changed, what happened in 1979 does not necessarily reflect what's happening today in the debate over adverse events following vaccination, and so on.

Except ...

Click on the photo to bring up a full-sized pop up window. You can change the percent view in the lower right hand corner to see the entire doc. The PDF file has the full doc, fully legible as well.

...except there is an analogy here that goes way beyond the memo. Barbara Loe Fisher and Harris Coulter lay it all out in "A Shot in the Dark," subtitled "Why the P in the DPT vaccination may be hazardous to your child's health." Barbara is regularly portrayed in the media as an anti-vaccine zealot, but the book's discussion of what happened in Tennessee is pretty convincing. (And she was instrumental in getting a safer version of the vaccine onto the market.) From the book:

"When statistics are applied to the study of vaccines, political immunology demonstrates its infinite flexibility: statistical evidence demonstrating cause and effect is denied, when this same evidence, applied to any other branch of medicine, would be accepted without question," Coulter and Fisher write.

"This convenient method of reasoning was displayed with particular clarity in connection with the government's investigation of SIDS deaths in Tennessee. In 1978-79, eleven babies were found to have died within eight days of a DPT vaccination. Nine of the eleven had been vaccinated with the same lot of pertussis vaccine, Wyeth #64201 and five (four from the same lot) had died within twenty-four hours of vaccination.

"A statistical analysis of the clustering of deaths revealed that the likelihood of observing four or more deaths occurring randomly on any of the first eight days after the use of lot #64201 was 3 in 100. ... E.B. Mortimer later reported that the probability of this being a chance association was even lower -- between 2 and 5 in 1,000.

"The statistical evidence in favor of a connection between the deaths and the DPT shot was strong. Would the medical authorities bite the bullet and admit the vaccine was related to the deaths? Absolutely not."

It's a long and unpleasant tale, but when all was said and done, "the tombstone was placed on what happened in Tennessee three years later, in the September 1982 issue of the Journal of Pediatrics, when Bernier and his colleagues at the CDC wrote their epitaph on the infant deaths. ... They ... made this amazing statement: 'Whether or not this temporal association reflects a causal relationship remains undetermined; we found no evidence to support such a causal association.'"

Fisher and Coulter mention the Wyeth memo, saying the company "apparently also decided to act to prevent a clustering of deaths following DPT vaccination from a single lot from ever occurring again in a single geographical area." They don't reproduce the actual memo; as far as I know, this is the first time it has been published. (And no, neither Fisher nor Coulter was my source.)

It packs quite a wallop, doesn't it? Since these are described as "Interim Measures In Affect" (sic!), and include a "Permanent Policy Proposal" to put into effect (sick!), wouldn't it be interesting to know how they distribute lots these days? Is this the kind of approach that Rosalynn Carter and Amanda Peet (I'll leave Paul Offit out of this) want to be hooked up with? Might they consider asking their benefactors for an explanation, since as far as I know none has been forthcoming although the memo's existence has been known for a couple of decades, at the least? Do the drug companies, the HMOs, the AAP and the CDC really have a track record of tracking down every report of side effects, encouraging the public to make use of the VAERS system and vigilantly monitoring the VSD database? Are they the ones we want to trust to tell us whether there is any "causal association" between vaccines and SIDS, or autism, or asthma, or ADD?

I vote no. I also can't help pointing out that A Shot in the Dark was first published in 1985, just before the modern Age of Autism began. Too bad no one in a position to do anything about it took seriously the deep and disturbing implications of this incident -- and the continuing power of "political epidemiology" to bury its mistakes in unmarked graves.--Dan Olmsted is Editor of Age of Autism.

* Thanks to Ginger Taylor of Adventures In Autism for help in turning a 29 year old piece of paper into files.

Comments

People need to understand that this planet we live on has finite resources. There is no way a healthy ecosystem can sustain multiple billions of people. The ideal population for living in homeostasis with other species in a sustainable way is 3.5 billion people (that means living a 1st world lifestyle). We have surpassed that figure and are over 7 billion. Collapse is what happens when human species fails to respect other species.

The best thing we can do is to adopt attrition of human beings. We either learn to live with the other inhabitants of this planet or we all bring this planet into total extinction. We ARE in the 6th extinction. Enjoy.

The Club of Rome is the UN think tank focused on depopulation, based on the much touted lie that the world is overpopulated.

President Jimmy Carter was a member, as is our ex UK Prime Minister,
Tony Blair. If you've been schooled that the earth is above max carrying capacity, then a few million deaths, via war or vaccines, is a boon for Mother Gaia.

It's even worse. Whatever was in the nurse's mind when she wrote the note, thirty years later she testified that her sole concern was that the mother was indifferent toward her child--even though the nurse also admitted that the baby's hands would periodically turn "black" when the nurses were feeding her. Black?

That Waneta, she doesn't smile enough; when she does smile it's because she relishes the attention. She's smarter than she makes you think, with her hair that's all fallen out. Such a manipulator. Always complaining about her health problems because she wants you to feel sorry for her. It's just me, me, me all the time with Waneta.

I'm reading _The Death of Innocents_ by Firstman and Talan, a book about the deaths of five of Waneta Hoyt's infants and her conviction many years later for murdering them. The doctor who championed the role of sleep apnea in SIDS, Dr. Steinschneider, comes in for quite a shellacking too. Two of Hoyt's children, Molly and Noah, were monitored extensively for apnea by Steinschneider in hospital and died shortly after being released to their parents' care.

Though at least some of the deceased infants were found to have physical problems such as edema and pneumonia, the prosecution either attributed them to smothering or discounted them. So long, Waneta. In your next life make sure you only talk to the cops with a lawyer present.

The authors tell us that these kids were healthy until their psycho mother got her hands on them. That's the premise of the book, after all. So I was surprised that they included this nurse's note on 2 month-old Molly made hours before her release from hospital:

"...Right eye tearing slightly during feeding....The baby was able to focus on moving object today and respond to it. I discussed my concern for this baby with Dr. Steinschneider this A.M. At times Molly will not respond to her surroundings at all--her head is turned to the left and she has a glassy stare. At these times the baby totally lacks affect and appears retarded. At other times she has been known to 'coo' and watch the mobile. She _rarely_ smiles in response to another person. The interaction between mother and baby is almost nil in my opinion."

Does that sound like a healthy baby? To me it sounds like the kid is having seizures and is on the road to ASD. It's not because the mom is doing anything; the authors are careful to tell us that she only comes every third or fourth day. And the nurses watch her like a hawk when she's there because three of her babies have already died.

No reviewer seems to have noticed that there was something pretty wrong with this baby. Probably didn't get that far. The book's kind of long.

In pharmaceutical production there are NEVER two batches which are the same with respect to test results, be they physical, chemical or microbiological etc. This applies to all injections/vaccines.

One operates in regions, for example: the amount of an ingredient must be within +10% to - 10% of the stated amount.

A certain (small) percentage from each batch is tested and it is deduced from these results whether or not the whole batch should be approved.

RECALLS.
These are made on the basis of sample control for batches. A satisfactory test result on some samples implies that the whole batch is up to standard. It is however no guarantee.
Vaccines are delivered to many states and to many countries. Recall systems vary from efficient to non-existent.

Sometimes when there are serious adverse events reported we hear that the batch was maybe a hot one.

I've just read _Stolen Innocence_ by John Batt, an account of Sally Clark's conviction for murdering her two baby sons, Christopher and Harry. Harry, her second son, was found dead a few hours after immunization with DTP, Hib and polio vaccines. A toxicology report (concealed from her defense) showed that Harry died from a systemic Staphylococcus aureus infection. (The first son, Christopher, died a year earlier, about three weeks after immunizations.)

S. aureus, it seems, is often associated with "SIDS": http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0928824499000772 . I've glanced at an article about cross-reactivity between S. aureus and vaccine components, but I'm wondering if the answer is simpler than that. Is it possible that S. aureus was present as a vaccine contaminant?

Christopher, like Harry, had a running nose at the time of his death and had had a copiously bleeding nose two weeks after vaccination. I'm not aware of any toxicology reports on him.

There is another way that Vaccine maker's can keep people off track from finding out how vaccines injure or cause SIDS and Deaths to so many once healthy babies. To my understanding they can use different manufacturer's in one day for the12-20 or so shots. So one company might have created the DPaT, a noter the MMR, and even a part of a vaccine might have been from another source. So WHO would you go after in Vaccine court? One vaccine maker would cry out"It wasn't us, must have been the other guys!" Shell of Recovering Autism, ADHD, & Special Needs."

Eleven days after my son had a DPT vaccine way back in 1982, he reacted with high pitch screaming, convulsions, acting inconsolable, and was out of it for a week....he never came back...never....seizures, autism, (later in life suffering heart problems due to long term seizures) etc....when I asked Dr Geier what was wrong with that year, he told me it had the most reactions and deaths ever. I want to strangle everyone who thought this was a good vaccine. Clearly, Dtap isn't much better, since on package inserts it is known to cause autism. In rats, they convulse and die on days eleven to fourteen...so where is my justice? When the VAERS says my son shouuld have died or convulsed on day one to three? Yet, clearly, rats get the better shaft than my son, at least SCIENCE acknowledges what they did to them?

What this illustrates, other than that Pharma knows about "hot lots" and wants to cover them up (or make them harder to find, or less likely to cause public outrage when 5 kids from the same hospital die on the same day 2 days after vax).

It is that *hot lots exist at all*. If ALL the lots of vaccine were truly the same, they should all work the same, so the only variable would be the child's individual immune system, or toxic exposure in the environment contributing to.. say.. induced mitochondrial dysfunction..

In the second case (environmental toxicity), it seems like it should effect ANY lot of vaccines about equally. In the first case (individual differences), it should be rather random, and not depend on the (supposedly) identical lots.

Conclusion: the lots are different. Corollary: the vaccine companies *have no idea exactly what's in the vaxes*!

Either that, or there is something more going on to explain why "hot lots" occur if those lots are actually identical. It would behoove us all (except Pharma of course) to figure out why.

There was a time when I believed the poisoning of our children via thimerosal was an accident. Just another example of American incompetance. But since the news of the Merck memo and Simpsonwood file and now this lovely article, I am certain that the pharmafia knew all and just didn't care.

Today, a dear friend just handed me a copy of this Wyeth internal memo dated 8-27-79. Nearly thirty years ago. As I work to shorten my presentation, I will be adding this memo in. Nothing should shock anymore. But this memo seems to succintly capture the essence of what smells so bad. How about we all print out copies of this memo, type the URL of this AOA post at the top and hand them out to random people. "What do you think of this?" Imagine what an entire industry could be capable of in 30 years' time if it could pursue profits completely unchecked? Imagine.

THANK YOU for posting this. I remember reading about Wyeth's change in strategy after the Tennessee DPT/SIDS incident years ago, in Neil Miller's "Vaccines: Are They Really Safe and Effective", but have never been able to find the source to confirm it.

It is also equally apalling that the vaccine manufacturers do not have to disclose the size of each vaccine lot, so a proper comparison and analysis could be made with respect to adverse reactions. But of course they wouldn't want us to be able to do this.

Dear Friends in Autism, Another page from the past, if anyone is interested: My husband happened to pull out a Merck Manual of 1956. The Merck manual gives details and uses of many chemicals, and we said, Oh, lets see if we can find thimerosal? Sure enough , it was there. It had another name also. All around thimerosal were other mercury compounds with all sorts of terribly scary ill effects on people and many many usages in industry, but oddly, when it came to thimerosal, there was no mention of vaccines. Strange, isnt it. does anyone out there know when Merck began making vaccines?

It occurred to me today when working that part of the drive to change laws and such concerning vaccines should be a requirement by the federal government that lots NOT be scattered in order to provide better assessment of safety and contamination issues.

after my son had his MMR/varivax seizures I was in a Quest lab in our long journey of testing, in the waiting room was another mom with a little boy around the same age but from 3 towns away, he too also had seizures post MMR/varivax and was in getting blood work-up for her son. Fast forward to 1st grade 4 out of 35 first grade boys ALL HAD SEIZURES post MMR/varivax.

A friend's ASD daughter 3 months older than my son were both hospitalized AT THE SAME TIME/Same hospital- post Hep B for E.coli in urine my son at 1 month of age(his first Hep B) she after her 2nd booster, same pediatrician E. Coli cultured out in her urine as well. Surprise-NOT.

Back in 1991, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the top vaccinologists in the world, wrote a memo to the president of Merck Pharmaceutical Co. warning about the high mercury levels children were receiving in their vaccines. That warning was ignored and mercury exposure was only increased with additional vaccines.

But the government and Big Phama keep on investigating themselves and they keep on concluding that they're innocent.

Apparently, even the openly criminal behavior at Simpsonwood has been exonerated.

So who are we to question that?

Once you accept the basic premise that it's okay to actively hurt some people for the (often theoretical) good of other people, even if you only intend to sort of "accidentally" let a few be hurt (e.g., through "very rare" vaccine damage) the logical ends of that thinking include further harm, injury, murder and even genocide, usually for ever-expanding groups of people other than "one's own."

Thus, as was expressed here at AoA very recently, people report that friends and family members are "sorry" that our children were harmed, but they also see it as a necessary evil that other children (ours) should suffer so that their own children may be protected.

And again, it's one thing to accept a relatively small risk to one's own child for a relatively large benefit to that same child, but it's morally wrong to knowingly impose a risk on any child that is greater than the potential benefit to that child.

By that measure, much (most, or possibly all) multiple infant vaccination, under most circumstances, is morally wrong when performed by a knowledgeable person who fully understands that the risk for damage to the individual outweighs any potential benefit for that individual.

And that would pretty much describe current immunization practices in the U.S., U.K., and certain other "civilized" countries.

Please keep on commenting.

It's so refreshing to hear the truth now and again.

Even when stated politely, in the form of the question: "Shouldn't this be criminal?"

Sick, evil bastards! And this is a memo found--how about all the others that never saw the light of day? My autistic daughter is having a hard day--so reading this is like a knife in the wound--the knife that the government, the vaccine industry and these pro-vaccine, zealot spokespeople keep twisting.

I have researched every lot of every vaccine all of my kids have gotten.

For Nathan...
One year check up
DTaP - a child in WA (I would think in my county due to how vaccines are dist.) received the same lot as Nathan in the same two week period. That little six month old baby died within two weeks of vaccination. Cause of death was "toxic exposure/SIDS".

How in the hell can it be toxic exposure and SIDS???

18 month check up
DTaP - a child in WA (again probably in our county) received the same lot of DTaP that Nathan did. This child was diagnosed with autism in the same time period that Nathan was.

I try to avoid using the word "evil" whenever I can, but there is no other word to apply here. This is not a policy designed to detect and fix quality problems (in this case what have been called "hot lots") in vaccine products. Rather, this is an example of corporate managers deliberately working to conceal evidence that their products might cause death in children.

Did the man who write this memo and the "senior management" team that approved it sleep well the day they wrote this memo?

Keep going further back. Big pharm has been getting away with destroying lives for longer than that. Look at all the cases of GBS from the Swine Flu vaccine. At least the CDC sort of admits it.http://www.cdc.gov/FLU/about/qa/gbs.htm

I remember hearing about this method of scattering distribution several years ago and I think it is done with all vaccines, not just the DPT. And to prove it, I did a search at the VAERS site using the scant few lot numbers my son's pediatrician managed to record in the file and discovered that in one case, two other children had a reaction to the same lot number as my son. All three of us reside in completely different states.

Another thing I heard around the same time is that they won't disclose how many doses were provided for a particular lot number, also making it hard to prove a 'hot lot' since three children out of a 50-dose lot is different than three children out of say, a 200-dose lot.

I believe that the Carter White House had the responsibility to properly investigate these deaths.

Instead Ms. Carter promised that the Combating Autism Act would marshal in dollars to help slam the door in the face of parents and researchers associating autism and mass vaccination policies of the past.

All the more reason to support H.R. 6391 National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program Improvement Act of 2008.